


Perceptions

by toujours_nigel



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien, Masters of Rome - McCullough
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:39:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>so, um, this is crack, and I don't know why I wrote it. um.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Perceptions

**Author's Note:**

> so, um, this is crack, and I don't know why I wrote it. um.

The boy has a look about him—slight and blonde, and plain _pretty_, though his ears _do_ stick out—that smacks far more of Athens than Rome. Which is where Sulla found him. And has apparently tired enough of to gift.

It _never_ pays to disobey Sulla—as the little matter of elephants has served to teach him. So Pompey swallows his protests, grits his teeth, and discovers—as many of his friends do—that Sulla _always_ knows better. The boy—whose name is some unpronounceable Greek farrago—is unobtrusive, neat-handed, _and_ refuses to flinch from his tantrums.

And if he is too sharp-eyed to miss that Pompey looks at him long and hungry—impossible to get women in Spain without risking spies—he is also intelligent enough to lower his eyes in a swoop of lashes, and foolhardy enough to crawl into his commander’s bed at night, pliant and supple as his bowstring. Most relieving of all, he is discrete enough to put on no airs, and to always slip away before morning; disposing of him would be a wrench, he’s become accustomed to a neat tent.

But he does wonder whether Sulla’s sense of the ridiculous foresaw this.


End file.
